Women Behind Innovation

Executive Summary

GE and Alphabet’s X honored with 2017 Edison Achievement Award

NEW YORK, NY – (Oct. 25, 2016) – Now celebrating its 30th year, the Edison Awards, recognized as the world’s leading innovation award, today announced its two 2017 Edison Achievement Award honorees. Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, and Dr. Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, Alphabet’s innovation lab will be honored during the prestigious ceremony on April 20, 2017 in New York. The Edison Achievement Award honors distinguished business executives who have made a significant and lasting contribution to innovation throughout their careers and whose accomplishments serve as an inspiration to every industry and the world at large.

Jeff Immelt is the ninth chairman of GE, the world’s Digital Industrial Company that is transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions. Mr. Immelt has been named one of the “World’s Best CEOs” three times by Barron’s, and since he began serving as chief executive officer, GE has been named “America’s Most Admired Company” in a poll conducted by Fortune magazine and one of “The World’s Most Respected Companies” in polls by Barron’s and the Financial Times. Mr. Immelt was the chair of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and is a member of The American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Mr. Immelt earned a B.A. degree in applied mathematics from Dartmouth College in 1978 and an M.B.A. from Harvard University in 1982.

“I am so pleased to have received this recognition on behalf of the GE employees around the world. We carry on the legacy of GE founder Thomas Edison in how we have transformed GE into a digital industrial company, truly making it the 124 year-old-start-up,” said Jeff Immelt. “We push boundaries every day and are delivering new technologies to make the world work better.”

Dr. Astro Teller currently oversees X, (formerly Google[x]). As a respected scientist and seasoned entrepreneur, Dr. Teller has successfully created and grown five companies and holds numerous U.S. patents related to his work in hardware and software technology. Dr. Teller holds a B.S. in computer science and an M.S. in symbolic and heuristic computation from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a recipient of the Hertz fellowship.

“It’s an honor to accept a 2016 Edison Achievement Award on behalf of X, a moonshot factory within Alphabet. Our hope at X is that we can speed up the process of finding, in Edison’s words, ‘10,000 ways that won’t work’ and more quickly uncover ways to repeatedly invent and launch new technologies that could someday make the world a radically better place. And just as importantly, we want to encourage others around the world to take their own moonshots,” Astro Teller said.

“Jeff Immelt and Astro Teller are shaping the future and continue to deliver on their companies’ visions to make the world a better place. On behalf of our Steering Committee, we are honored to present them with our most prestigious award, the 2017 Edison Achievement Award,” said Frank Bonafilia, Executive Director of the Edison Awards. “Both men embody Thomas Edison’s values and principles as evidenced by Jeff Immelt leading GE to become the world’s biggest infrastructure technology company, and Astro Teller creating a place where big, science-fiction-sounding ideas can be turned into proven technologies that make a real impact in the world.

A sample of past Edison Achievement Award honorees include:

John Chambers, Executive Chairman, Cisco Systems

Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer, Tesla and SpaceX

Clayton Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School

About the Edison Awards™The Edison Awards is a program conducted by Edison Universe, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to fostering future innovators. The Awards have been recognizing and honoring the best in innovations and innovators since 1987. For more information on the Edison Awards history, nomination process and 2017 event details, visit www.edisonawards.com.